Equivalent Assholes

Former Giuliani speech writer & would-be Mugwump at the Daily Beast has a Wingnut Index. A scrupulous attempt at being fair & balanced, by pretending there is an extremist left of any significance in crypto-fascist America.

In the 10 areas measured, we have reached for binary criteria whenever possible, such as whether the candidate subscribes to the conspiracy theories of being a "birther" or a 9/11 truther, or whether they have compared their political opponents to either Nazis or communists. Evidence of either Bush Derangement Syndrome or Obama Derangement Syndrome was included in the general category of fearmongering.

Considering most Tea Partiers are willing to call anyone a commie, Nazi, fascist or socialist indiscriminately, how binary can this criterion be? Birth/Truth? Two sides of the same coin? Doesn't stop there; a comparison is drawn between the Family Research Council & AFSCME.

Hyper-partisan, special-interest-driven voting records were taken into account when possible—for example, candidates who received a 100 percent rating from the Family Research Council or a 100 percent rating from what could be considered their opposite interest group on the left, the AFS ratings by the Association of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees. (In the interest of full disclosure, Barbara Boxer's 99 rating was rounded up for inclusion.)

Could be considered their opposite interest group? Well, if ASCME were a coven, maybe. If not, what the fucking hell?

RINO hunting and DINO hunting are Wingnut hobbies and as one measure of that impulse we added points for those backed by the Club for Growth or its comparably small liberal corollary, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. Both groups target centrists in their own party.

Comparably small? We can only assume it's liberal media bias that gives the Club for Growth about 4,610,000 Google results, & the Progressive Change Campaign Committee about 411,00.

Then he just gives up & admits he's full of shit.

Despite our attempt to be genuinely fair and balanced in the selection criteria, it was perhaps inevitable that this list would lean decidedly right this year. Parties out of power can more easily be dominated to angry ideological absolutists absent the responsibilities of governing. The conservative populist movement is now surging within the Republican Party and winning primaries. Populists in the Democratic Party may be loud but they are not that influential in terms of actual representation in Senate candidates (this will change when we look at Congress next week). For example, while three GOP Senate candidates rank among the birthers—and one of them, Maryland's hapless Eric Wargotz, didn't even make the list—there are no Democrats running for Senate who embraced truther conspiracies in the Bush era. "Those are the facts," as H.L. Mencken once said, "and I'm sorry to have the Babylonian indecency of printing them."

We emphasize, he denies.